North Port leaders vow to save proposed ER

Wednesday

May 30, 2007 at 3:04 AM

By JOHN DAVIS

NORTH PORT -- City leaders agreed Tuesday to find a way to save a private company millions in tax dollars, after the company threatened to walk away from a health care park it plans to build in North Port.

The North Port Regional Medical Center threatened to take its 75,000-square-foot medical building off the drawing board if the city did not find a way to waive $2.5 million in impact, permitting and other government-related costs.

"The city needs to spend a little bit of capital," said Lee Gross, a local doctor and partner in the project.

Giving the project millions of dollars is legally tricky because it means the city has to create a uniform way to give financial breaks to everybody who builds emergency rooms.

"You can't just pick one taxpayer out," said City Attorney Rob Robinson of the tax breaks. "Yet again, North Port is treading on new ground."

The city will spend the coming weeks talking to the medical center and writing an ordinance that will defer or reduce impact fees.

The medical office building is popular with commissioners because the entire first floor, some 25,000 square feet, will be a 24-hour emergency room run by Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

Legally, Robinson said the city will be "winging it," noting that he could not find model legislation elsewhere for a city that wanted to save a medical office building money.

Beyond the first-floor ER, the rest of the development will be rented out to medical offices and other businesses.

"If we don't do something, there's not going to be this emergency room here," said Commissioner Vanessa Carusone.